


Divergence

by deaddennis



Series: Pepper Potts Is Not Okay [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22051333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deaddennis/pseuds/deaddennis
Summary: Pepper Potts snaps her fingers and Thanos dies.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Pepper Potts Is Not Okay [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1130489
Kudos: 13





	Divergence

**Author's Note:**

> Look, if you haven't read the rest of the series ... you're going to be *really* confused. Or maybe you won't be. Either way, this is a crack fic but treated seriously and I enjoyed writing it ENORMOUSLY.
> 
> The series is ended.

Pepper-As-Thanos snapped her fingers. A life blinked out of existence.

And for one moment – agonizing and awful, in an in-between place that isn’t and shouldn’t – she sees him, no _herself,_ die. Too many times to count.

He’s sitting on a throne in one of them. No, in forty of them. He’s working a red earth in another. He’s facing down people she thinks she recognizes. He’s standing. He’s sitting. He’s crawling. He’s fighting. He’s killing.

It zooms by.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Death and more death and more death and more death.

For a being in love with Death herself, Thanos goes into her embrace countless times. And each time there is no heady satisfaction of attaining his goal – he didn’t sacrifice half of all living things to her, after all.

He was foiled. Again and again and again.

And Pepper watches and feels each death. Each fade-into-nothingness.

She feels it and doesn’t think at all.

And then she’s suddenly standing in a street, staring blankly at a brick wall. The mutant – the girl who started this, and now has seemingly finished this too – has vanished.

Pepper staggers, slaps a hand against the brick wall to steady herself. How many times must her world be turned upside down? How many times must the strange, the bizarre, the extraordinary _happen_ to her?

First the Other place, now – this.

She throws up.

She’s too sturdy to faint. She yanks out her phone. Calls for a car to come and pick her up. Her mind is mercifully blank.

She can still remember his thoughts – they are sitting in her brain. So many thoughts. A dead Titan is in her head and she doesn’t know how to get him out.

\---

She has no idea where Tony is. For once, she cannot remember. She stumbles into her home. Tries to do some calming breathing exercises.

Miraculously, she finds her bed.

And in it – oblivion.

\---

“Pepper?”

A voice she knows but can’t hear.

“PEPPER!”

Nothing.

\---

She dreams of worlds. Of futures that could have been and won’t anymore. She dreams of a baby. Of a name.

She dreams of loss. Of gain.

Of victory. Of failure.

She dreams and feels a gut-wrenching grief.

She dreams again and sees a woman whose scalp is bald, gaze is calm and knowing, garments like that of a monk’s.

 _It was you then,_ the woman says. _It was very brave of you. The universe is saved from a dreadful fate._

Pepper doesn’t speak, she just stares. It’s her dream, after all. And she doesn’t want to respond.

_You touched time itself. Other realities. For one second, you saw everything. Sleep now, Mrs. Stark. I will make sure your mind doesn’t fracture. Sleep._

She sleeps and doesn’t dream any more.

\---

She wakes up and there is Tony. He looks haggard, old.

He puts his arms around her and clings as though he would never let her go.

 _What a long way we’ve come_ , says Pepper.

“Pepper,” says Tony. “You’ve got to _tell_ me.”

And suddenly, Pepper can’t remember any of her reasoning for _not_ telling him – about the Other place. Of where she’s just been.

“Tony,” she says. And that one word, that one name holds so much meaning for her.

Home.

Love.

Everything.

“Can I tell you a story?”

It takes a long time, but Tony believes her – he had his own theories, after all. They were almost correct. (The Pepperton Bear Case is solved. She tells him that was an awful name but can't keep the smile out of her voice.) She tells him about Thanos and sees the worry lines around his face relax.

He is very quiet for a long time after that. Thoughtful.

“I’ll be pregnant,” she tells him after a while.

“Seeing the future too, Potts?” he asks.

Pepper smiles at him. “I have.”

She saw the grief it could have held. Saw the joy it will now bring, untempered by a snap and a declaration that echoes that very first one: _I am Ironman._

(She was right – wasn’t she? All those years ago. To stay with him. To stand by him. Tony Stark is, was, and will be a good man to his very last breath. Not unflawed. Not perfect. But she loves him fiercely anyway and she thinks - no, she _knows_ \- she always will.)

“It’s good, Mr. Stark,” she tells him with a smile. “It’s _very_ good.”


End file.
